What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (5 page)

as the orchid dies

and the grass goes

insane, let's have one for the lost:

I met an old man

and a tired whore

in a bar

at 8:00 in the morning

across from MacArthur Park—

we were sitting over our beers

he and I and the old whore

who had slept in an unlocked car

the night before

and wore a blue necklace.

the old guy said to me:

“look at my arms. I'm all bone.

no meat on me.”

and he pulled back his sleeves

and he was right—

bone with just a layer of skin

hanging like paper.

he said, “I don't eat

nothin'.”

I bought him a beer and the

whore a beer.

now there, I thought, is a man

who doesn't eat

meat, he doesn't eat

vegetables. kind of a saint.

it was like a church in there

as only the truly lost

sit in bars on Tuesday mornings

at 8:00 a.m.

then the whore said, “Jesus,

if I don't score tonight I'm

finished. I'm scared, I'm really

scared. you guys can go to skid row

when things get bad. but where can a

woman go?”

we couldn't answer her.

she picked up her beer with one hand

and played with her blue beads with the

other.

I finished my beer, went to the

corner and got a
Racing Form
from Teddy the

newsboy—age 61.

“you got a hot one today?”

“no, Teddy, I gotta see the board; money

makes them run.”

“I'll give you 4 bucks. bet one for

me.”

I took his 4 bucks. that would buy a sandwich,

pay parking, plus 2

coffees. I got into my car, drove

off. too early for the

track. blue beads and bones. the

universe was

bent. a cop rode his bike right up

behind me. the day had really

begun.

arriving to applause

through Spanish doorways

hardly ever

works. eating an apple

sometimes

works.

the ax misses by a hair's breadth

and breaks the chimney of a

lady's house.

then it swings back,

cleaves
you

again, there it is,

yes, there it

is

again.

how to break clear?

a .44 magnum?

a can of ale?

the museum of pain

doesn't charge admission,

it's free as skunkshit.

from the brothels of Paris

to the hardware stores of Pasadena

from balloons

to diamond mines,

from screaming to singing

from blood to paint

from paint to miracle

from miracle to damnation.

the people walk and talk

cut to pieces

pieces of people sliced like

pie

knifed and forked and

gulped

away.

I sit in a small room

listening to classical piano on the radio.

each note bites,

nips; you fall into the mirror,

come through the other

side

staring at a lightbulb.

God sits in Munich

drinking green beer. we've got to find

Him and ask Him

why.

it is quite something to turn your radio on

low

at 4:30 in the morning

in an apartment house

and hear Haydn

while through the blinds

you can see only the black night

as beautiful and quiet

as a flower.

and with that

something to drink,

of course,

a cigarette,

and the heater going,

and Haydn going.

maybe just 35 people

in a city of millions listening

as you are listening now,

looking at the walls,

smoking quietly,

not hating anything,

not wanting anything.

existing like mercury

you listen to a dead man's music

at 4:30 in the morning,

only he is not really dead

as the smoke from your cigarette curls up,

is not really dead,

and all is magic,

this good sound

in Los Angeles.

but now a siren takes the air,

some trouble, murder, robbery, death…

but Haydn goes on

and you listen,

one of the finest mornings of your life

like some of those when you were very young

with stupid lunch pail

and sleepy eyes

riding the early bus to the railroad yards

to scrub the windows and sides of trains

with a brush and oakite

but knowing

all the while

you would take the longest gamble,

and now having taken it,

still alive,

poor but strong,

knowing Haydn at 4:30 a.m.,

the only way to know him,

the blinds down

and the black night

the cigarette

and in my hands this pen

writing in a notebook

(my typewriter at this hour would

scream like a raped bear)

and

now

somehow

knowing the way

warmly and gently

finally

as Haydn ends.

and then a voice tells me

where I can get bacon and eggs,

orange juice, toast, coffee

this very morning

for a pleasant price

and I like this man

for telling me this

after Haydn

and I want to get dressed

and go out and find the waitress

and eat bacon and eggs

and lift the coffee cup to my mouth,

but I am distracted:

the voice tells me that Bach

will be next: “Brandenburg Concerto No. 2

in F major,”

so I go into the kitchen for a

new can of beer.

may this night never see morning

as finally one night will not,

but I do suppose morning will come this day

asking its hard way—

the cars jammed on freeways,

faces as horrible as unflushed excreta,

trapped lives less than beautiful love,

and I walk out

knowing the way

cold beer can in hand

as Bach begins

and

this good night

is still everywhere.

I was sitting in my cell

and all the guys were tattooed

BORN TO LOSE

BORN TO DIE

all of them were able to roll a cigarette

with one hand

if I mentioned Wallace Stevens or

even Pablo Neruda to them

they'd think me crazy.

I named my cellmates in my mind:

that one was Kafka

that one was Dostoevsky

that one was Blake

that one was Céline

and that one was

Mickey Spillane.

I didn't like Mickey Spillane.

sure enough that night at lights out

Mickey and I had a fight over who got the

top bunk

the way it ended neither of us got the top bunk

we both got the hole.

after I got out of solitary I made

an appointment with the warden.

I told him I was a writer

a sensitive and gifted soul

and that I wanted to work in the library.

he gave me two more days in the hole.

when I got out I worked in the shoe factory.

I worked with Van Gogh, Schopenhauer, Dante, Robert Frost

and Karl Marx.

they put Spillane in license plates.

Phillipe's is an old time

cafe off Alameda street

just a little north and east of

the main post office.

Phillipe's opens at 5 a.m.

and serves a cup of coffee

with cream and sugar

for a nickel.

in the early mornings

the bums come down off Bunker Hill,

as they say,

“with our butts wrapped

around our ears.”

Los Angeles nights have a way

of getting very

cold.

“Phillipe's,” they say,

“is the only place that doesn't

hassle us.”

the waitresses are old

and most of the bums are

too.

come down there some

early morning.

for a nickel

you can see the most beautiful faces

in town.

I saw him sitting in a lobby chair

in the Patrick Hotel

dreaming of flying fish

and he said “hello friend

you're looking good.

me, I'm not so well,

they've plucked out my hair

taken my bowels

and the color in my eyes

has gone back into the sea.”

I sat down and listened

to him breathe

his last.

a bit later the clerk came over

with his green eyeshade on

and then the clerk saw what I knew

but neither of us knew

what the old man knew.

the clerk stood there

almost surprised,

taken,

wondering where the old man had gone.

he began to shake like an ape

who'd had a banana taken from his hand.

and then there was a crowd

and the crowd looked at the old man

as if he were a freak

as if there was something wrong with him.

I got up and walked out of the lobby

I went outside on the sidewalk

and I walked along with the rest of them

bellies, feet, hair, eyes

everything moving and going

getting ready to go back to the beginning

or light a cigar.

and then somebody stepped on

the back of my heel

and I was angry enough to swear.

hell crawls through the window

without a sound

enters my room

takes off his hat

and sits down on the couch across from me.

I laugh.

then my lamp drops off the table,

I catch it just before it hits the

floor, and in doing so,

I spill my

beer. “oh shit!” I say;

when I look up again

the son-of-a-bitch

is gone—

off looking for you,

my friend?

we struck in the middle of a

simple dawn

all their ships were in the harbor

and we torched them and created a giant

sunrise

we turned our cannon on the cathedral

cut the legs off the cavalry

found the army hung-over in the barracks

pig-stabbed them out of the dream

and the women had no chance

especially the young ones

we bared them neatly

screaming

we violated them in every way

beat the soul out of them

killed some

cut the nipples off others

then we ate all the meat and drank all

the booze in town.

war was good so long

as

you won.

when we marched out

singing

there was nothing left

back there

but fire and smoke

and death

and marching over the hill

at sunrise

the flowers rewarded us

with their

beauty.

Rilke, she said, don't you love

Rilke?

no, I said, he bores me,

poets bore me, they are shits, snails, snippets of

dust in a cheap wind.

Lorca, she said, how about Lorca?

Lorca was good when he was good. he knew how to

sing, but the only reason you like him

is because he was murdered.

Shelley, then, she said, how about Shelley?

didn't he drown in a rowboat?

then how about the lovers? I forget their names…

the two Frenchmen, one killed the

other…

o great, I said, now tell me about

Oscar Wilde.

a great man, she said.

he was clever, I said, but you believe in all these things

for the wrong reason.

Van Gogh, then, she said.

there you go, I said, there you go again.

what do you mean?

I mean that what the other painters of the time said was true:

he was an average painter.

how do you know?

I know because I paid $10 to go in and see some of his

paintings. I saw that he was interesting,

honorable, but not great.

how can you say, she asked, all these things about all these people?

you mean, why don't I agree with you?

for a man who is almost starving to death, you talk like some

god-damned sage!

but, I said, haven't all your heroes starved?

but this is different; you dislike everything that I like.

no, I said, I just don't like the way you

like them.

I'm leaving, she said.

I could have lied to you, I said, like most

do.

you mean men lie to me?

yes, to get at what you think is holy.

you mean, it's not holy?

I don't know, but I won't lie

to make it work.

be damned with you then, she said.

good night, I said.

she really slammed that door.

I got up and turned on the radio.

there was some pianist playing that same work by

Grieg. nothing changed. nothing

ever changed.

nothing.